Kamisama Hajimemashita – 08

by psgels, posted in Kamisama Hajimemashita

Just like Sakurasou, a sell-out episode. Where Sakurasou came with the sister, Kamisama Hajimemashita treats us to a beach episode. The big difference is that where Sakurasou got lost in its own cliches, Kamisama Hajimemashita used those clichés to achieve some really good character development.

And the simple reason for this was something major that Tomoe did in the sea 526 years ago. This was back when he was still completely different from who he used to be, and stole one of the eyes of someone called the dragon king, who is very strict with debts, to the point where it gets hilarious. This episode danced around the issue, but this seems to have been a major defining moment in Tomoe’s life. The biggest hint for this was that he was practically baited into it by that tramp: the issue had to be solved somehow, to the point where he felt that it was worth risking Tomoe’s life for.

What made the beach part of this episode enjoyable was how fresh it was. Rather than just showing the female cast parade in swimsuits, they really added stuff that was personal to the cast: Tomoe being unable to enter the water, Nanami unable to buy a swimsuit, to that one girl skipping along while just being dumped by her boyfriend. This episode really made sure to spice up such a clichéd set-up, and made it fun again, and it was the school example of how to do such an episode right.

Plus, the guy with the scarf just lost all of his dignity with that speedo of his. I burst out laughing there, but at the same time I really like the mystery around him and the irony of how he has basically been watching Tomoe from behind without him noticing it. I really want to see Tomoe’s face when he finds out. The creators already managed to create this expectation that it will be awesome just from the few times he has bene in the picture. Now that is good storytelling.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo – 07

by psgels, posted in Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

Aagh! Not the sister!

This episode made this show cost a lot of points. Mari Okada, you should know better than this. Even if this was exactly like the original source material, this episode had such major problems that they should have been fixed by the script review. I think everyone here is to blame for not noticing it, but even then: someone had to have come up with this.

First of all, the sister was an exact carbon copy of all the other token sisters you see everywhere. That was by far the worst offense this episode made. It didn’t start well when she started by randomly showing her panties, but the rest of the episode did not make this better by making her only defining character trait “I like my brother”. This was just plain bad.

Another problem was that she also dragged the entire show along with her. Previously I said that the fanservice in this show adds to the characters: remove it and the show would be less good. The fanservice in this episode however, was just plain random and pointless. The sister just randomly shows her underwear, the bath randomly breaks down so that we can go to a bath to see the girls grope each other… it’s all incredibly shallow that you’d expect from a third rate hentai game adaptation, not this show that prided itself with quality writing and character development.

On top of that, there was Nanami. Previously she was a character who also had her agenda. In this episode her entire character also got reduced to “I like Sorata”. Again: Mari Okada, you should know better than this.

The sole salvation for this episode was the direction: it knew it had something completely awful to work with, and at least tried to make the best of it. The visual images were great to watch, the use of life action worked great and the camera angles and timing actually made me laugh. Sorata’s straight man act also saved this episode from a complete disaster, and Misaki getting her drivers’ license also was a nice touch. I expect much better next week though. But what do you mean that the sister is going to be a recurring character!?
Rating: 3/8 (Mediocre)

Magi – 07

by psgels, posted in Magi

Well, the start of the episode made it rather obvious that this was originally written by a woman. In a way, I like that this show has fanservice for both genders, and that the fanservice also knows when to shut up. Afterwards this episode turned into a pretty interesting episode for wurld building by showing the city that Sindbad the Sailor founded.

All accompanied by some good old fashioned chemistry. Sindbad already is an interesting character from the start, but he works particularly well. With Aladdin meanwhile it’s good to already spot a bit of character development: he has become more aware of his goal, and he’s definitely less ignorant than what he was in the first episodes.

Also, A-1 is on fire this week. First there was the surprisingly good animation for Sword Art Online, and now this episode too had some really good inbetween animation, although a lot more polished. But the characters here look so incredibly dynamic: everything is just moving, and this definitely is a great use of a big budget. Also, next season A-1 will do seven shows at the same time. Holy crap.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Hunter X Hunter – 56

by psgels, posted in Hunter X Hunter

That. Was. Awesome! I mean, I rarely rewatch series for the reason that I’d much rather spend my time on stuff I haven’t seen before, plus that the impact of watching something again is just not as good as when watching it for the first time. And yet I was completely thrilled when watching this episode.

I mean, what can I say? This episode just showed so well why the Spider Troupe is my favorite organization for a shounen series. This time they really act as a team and they are acted so well, and they all make so good use of each other’s powers. This is also where Gon really shines, and does something that no other main character would do: sacrifice himself so that his friend would not get noticed. All of these characters worked incredibly well together, and I’m so glad that this series has also managed to capture that.

The music also was just perfect. I mean, in the past I criticized this show a lot for not using its soundtrack right, but the scene in which Squala died, it was just perfect. It really sent chills through my spine. That scene also showed one of the strengths of this show: from out of nowhere it can take a random side character and make him or her ten times better from out of nowhere in a realistic way. I loved just showing him taking care of his dogs, and his problems of trying to feed them all. I loved how he just has a completely normal girlfriend. THAT was exactly what was missing in the Hunter Exam arc, and the creators actually found it again!

On top of that, I’m just completely fanboying over my favorite character. And yet again I’m not telling who it is until the arc for this person is over for the sake of spoilers.
Rating: 6.5/8 (Amazing)

Uchuu Kyoudai – 33

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

First of all, I’d like to share this xkcd comic, just because it just fits this show so well: realistic depictions of spacecraft with tons of dry humour.

Now, this episode was about the moon landing: Hibito finally reaching his dream of setting a foot on the moon, and this was even better than what I could have hoped. This is where everything came together, all of the build-up on Hibito came together, and finally we get to see the moon, but the way in which the creators depicted it was also just amazing: they just showed everyone living towards that moment. All the characters, from the NASA staff, to the JAXA staff, to the major and minor characters, including a brilliant opening of the episode done by Mutta and Hibito’s father.

What also was awesome was that we got to see the creators poke fun at the moon landing of Neil Armstrong. I loved the scene where Mutta found out about the sentence that Hibito uttered as he first stepped on the moon, and how he could have seen it coming from miles away. On top of that, his video message using Apo also had me in stitches.

After this we’ll probably start focusing on Mutta again, but with the pacing of this series you’ll never know. There are just so many great characters that this show can do something with, but on top of all I love how Hibito’s launch has basically been one giant awesome red herring for Mutta’s final exam. These are all tropes that spice up this series even more, and it already was incredibly good.
Rating: 6.5/8 (Amazing)

Star Crossed 7 Year Anniversary

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Hell yeah! Seven years already. A lot has changed over the past year, most notably for my personal life being much more active so that I lost a lot of time that I normally had to keep up to date with everything. The past year has definitely been a year of experimentation for me, and I’m definitely not planning to quit anytime soon despite having a few backlog issues. In any case, every year I celebrate this with a few statistics. I’m not doing funny search terms this year unfortunately, simply because of how much time it takes to compile them and make them good (seriously, this involved looking through tens of thousands of different search terms, spotting the odd ones amongst them…!)

In the past seven years, I have written 5361 posts, spread over 268 categories. A total number of 47525 comments have been submitted to this site, and that doesn’t even count the shoutbox. That one has 33355 comments already (in less than a year!!). Here is a list of the top commenters for the shoutbox (yes, I can get to my database with this site, so I can gather more useful statistics):

#20: Sei – 311
#19: Jak – 323
#18: Anonymous – 346
#17: imredjimmy – 381
#16: Raggers – 413
#15: kero – 444
#14: TheUltimateReaper – 502
#13: Ninja – 537
#12: Airies – 705
#11: psgels – 874
#10: dango – 877
#9: Juno – 1112
#8: Kaiserin Emma – 1295
#7: Jalapeno Bagel – 1331
#6: Anca – 1382
#5: Armpit – 1439
#4: wicked – 1895
#3: AidanAK47 – 1906
#2: Bunny – 2949
#1: Kaiser Eoghan – 7580

I’m just amazed at how much Kaiser/in Emma/Eoghan has been able to produce for the past year, especially considering how long his comments usually are. In any case, here is the list of the people who left the most comments on this site. And yes, this goes all the way back to the beginning of this site:

#35: reverse – 167
#34: Perrin4869 – 167
#33: senerikfred – 170
#32: Windspirit – 173
#31: Westlo – 173
#30: WatcherZero – 174
#29: Tan-Tan – 179
#28: chounokoe – 182
#27: PL – 183
#26: Wyrdwad – 186
#25: Joojoobees – 189
#24: DmonHiro – 193
#23: Hogart – 211
#22: AKI – 214
#21: c160 – 225
#20: totoum – 229
#19: Anca – 232
#18: m – 239
#17: Anon – 241
#16: Kero – 248
#15: Frost – 254
#14: chris – 261
#13: Alec – 271
#12: windy – 273
#11: Scruffy – 276
#10: Machi – 291
#9: Denizen – 328
#8: Puran – 329
#7: kim – 338
#6: AidanAK47 – 353
#5: Firechick – 360
#4: wicked – 384
#3: Solaris – 531
#2: MeOW – 647
#1: psgels – 2522

This was also the first time I looked at these numbers, and I must say: thank you all for leaving so many comments. I had no idea how many of you provided so much feedback until I actually saw this. Anyway, as for viewer statistics: in total this site has gotten 17294328 page views (that’s 17 million), and 9723537 unique visits. Yes, we’ve nearly reached the 10 million. I unfortunately cannot do a list with the most accessed posts since google analytics screwed up since changing sites, however here is a list of the most common search terms (aside from variations of ‘psgels’ and ‘star crossed’.

#30: kekkaishi review
#29: black lagoon review
#28: overdrive anime
#27: best anime 2007
#26: ergo proxy
#25: top ten anime
#24: hakuouki
#23: xxxholic rou
#22: shigurui
#21: heroic age review
#20: casshern sins review
#19: clannad after story review
#18: bakumatsu kikansetsu irohanihoheto
#17: baccano review
#16: angel beats review
#15: kaze no stigma (this is one from way back; I once wrote a really bad first impression of it and it somehow landed high on Google; it kept haunting me for the next year afterwards)
#14: mahou shoujotai
#13: seirei no moribito
#12: toward the terra
#11: clannad review
#10: blassreiter review
#9: eden of the east review
#8: dennou coil
#7: school days review
#6: mouryou no hako (I love how people were actually looking for this one; it’s still generating traffic, although not as much as a few years ago)
#5: saiunkoku monogatari
#4: aoi bungaku (I did not expect this one to generate so much traffic as it did)
#3: top 10 anime
#2: that anime blog (I still like how people basically come here looking for the wrong blog)
#1: darker than black review

Eureka Seven Ao Review – 87.5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Eureka Seven Ao



The original Eureka Seven is a classic. If you like teenagers and mecha, then by all means give it a chance: it has a very rocky start, but has so many defining moments. And so, six years after its end, Bones came with a sequel. It’s quite an interesting series: you really need to have seen the first series in order to enjoy it, yet it is nothing like its predecessor.

The series takes some of the core concepts of Eureka Seven, it takes its defintion of Trappar and Corallian, it grabs the son of the two lead characters of Eureka Seven, puts him into a completely different location and even time, and just goes with it, trying to explain what the hell is going on as it goes along. Where Eureka Seven focused on showing children’s naivety, this series instead turns this around by forcing children in the center of conflict, while emphasizing that they do not belong there in the slightest. With these themes, it tells a story that with one crazy amount of plot twists.

After a bit of a warm-up period, this show just delivers plot twist after plot twist after plot twist. It’s a really good mystery series, with a lot of interesting ideas and twists that come from out of nowhere and give completely different turns to what the plot was before. This obviously has its advantages and disadvantages.

I mean, back with Un-Go, that was a series that had perfect control of its fast pacing. Ao does not, and there are quite a few plotholes. On the other hand though, there are plenty of moments that might seem ludicrous, only to make sense when you start thinking about it. A lot of the plot twists aren’t explicitly explained, or require the viewer to constantly pay attention to what’s going on: this is one series that does not plan to hold the hands of its viewers, and you definitely cannot watch it when you’re tired, otherwise you’ll miss stuff.

Anyway, I have seen plenty of people turned off by the plotholes, but I personally loved what this series tried to do. It’s all about the suspense of disbelief for this series, and let me tell you: if this suspense of disbelief holds, then there is a lot to like about this show. Helping are the characters, who may not be as good as the cast of Eureka Seven, but still are very likable, diverse and entertaining, and this show is also full of unexpected character-development.

What I really encountered here that this show does like none other, is how it treats the old characters of the first series. Out of all the sequels I have seen that focus on different characters than the first, this is BY FAR the best use of the old cast. They are used at the exact right moment, and this show pays homage to them, yet also shows their flaws, it shows who they turned into after the end of the series, and it gives them their own storylines that are more than just “let us old guys just watch over you new guys”. It’s fanservice, but I appreciated it so much.

This is a very ambitious series. You can also see this though the production values, which were some of the most consistent of the year for an action series, containing a lot of fluid and fast-paced action scenes and a really good soundtrack. The plot twists and characters on top of that made it a really fun and entertaining series for me, although this ambition does have its prices to pay with the rushed plot that is easy to get bored with.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Love the ambition of this series of delivering as many plot twists as possible that attempt to weave a whole storyline together. Great mystery, though the rushed pacing and plotholes will be a turn-off for some.
Characters: 8.5/10 – Briliant use of the old Eureka Seven cast, Enjoyable and gripping cast of both main and side characters, although the cast is too big for every character to really show his/her best.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Great production values, excellent soundtrack, really fluid animation at times.
Setting: 8.5/10 – Takes the setting of Eureka Seven, expands upon it, turns it into something completely different and completely changes what it stands for. Might be hard to swallow for fans of the first series hoping for the same.

Suggestions:
– Darker than Black – Ryuusei no Gemini
– Un-Go
– Noein

Eureka Seven Ao – 23 & 24

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao

Hmm, a lot of you will probably disagree with this, and I’m currently double-checking to make sure of this… but this episode was pretty much amongst my top 5 endings of the year (along with Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Chihayafuru, Natsume Yuujinchou and Sakamichi no Apollon for those of you who were curious).

Why? It just went all out, tried to do a ton of stuff in just 50 minutes and managed to wrap itself up really well for the circumstances, and the way its plot ended up focusing on Renton, Eureka and Ao was just the icing on the cake: the thing I’ve been waiting for for so long, and this show delivered on it. It gave plenty of character to Renton, Eureka finally got some closure, we finally know what happened to Ao’s brother.The entire episode was erratic as hell, and the huge amount of time-skips made it quite hard to follow everything that went on, but that has always been the selling point of this series for me: not holding your hand, and just delivering plot twist after plot twist. And my suspense of disbelief has always been high enough for the characters to not want to bother with the plotholes.

The ending itself, for Renton to not be able to be with his parents… I liked it. After the entire series was building up the themes that children shouldn’t be in the battlefield, and that adults should try their best to support them, Ao entirely turns that around by just trying to do everything himself. This could be his coming of age, or just that he got what was coming to him. I mean, it’s not like this show tries to portray its main characters as right: they too have their flaws, and I really like that Renton wasn’t portrayed in a positive light in this episode, rather than glorifying him way too much.

And the production values were also just awesome. There were lots of gorgeous dogfights and action sequences, and Bones really made use of their time to deliver a feast for the eyes, but the ears as well. The techno soundtrack here really caught my ears and made this an adrenaline rush from start to finish for me.

The thing I like about Bones’ sequels is that they don’t sell out. The creators could easily have made some shallow copy of the original series. I believe that this is what happened to Last Exile’s Fam. Instead, the creators decided to do something completely different with Eureka Seven Ao, and you can see that with all of their sequels: Darker than Black 2 was miles away from the first season. The Full Metal Alchemist and Eureka Seven Movies were also completely different from the TV series, FMA Brotherhood had a completely different style from its first season despite having the same set-up, the Wolf’s Rain OVA went into a drastically different direction. I used to hate this, but as time goes on, I have to say that I really like this: they try to experiment and they’re ambitious with different styles and premises, rather than milking out the same over and over. It is this ambition that I’ve been longing for for quite a while now, and Ao just answered it perfectly. It is both fanservice for the original Eureka Seven, and something completely different at the same time.

Review will come up tomorrow. Too late for that now, unfortunately.

Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Psycho Pass – 06

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

This episode ties everything together, and I like it. What psycho pass has basically been doing is gather tropes, and taking a look at them through the mind of a psychopath. Last arc this was about online communities, this time we have this series’ rendition of Maria-Sama ga Miteru. What would happen if one of the characters there was a psychopath, and given the opportunity to commit murder?

This episode really tried to give a strange sense of beauty and aesthetics to murder, taking the elegance of what you’d usually expect in a catholic all-girl high school, and using this in its story really well (also making this the second show this season to quote shakespeare). In this episode I also really could spot some hints of Naoyoshi Shiotani. I can’t exactly put my finger to why, but the style of direction in this episode reminded me of Tokyo Marble Chocolate. Still, I’d say that he’s quite a bit more restrained compared to the episodes and OPs that he has directed in the past. But that I guess is to be expected, considering how much more people are involved in the making of just one series, compared to a single episode or opening for which you have much more freedom (which is probably also why Sayo Yamamoto keeps doing the direction for OPs like what she did for this series as well).

Also, alcohol. Love seeing it used again. Not just for the sake of alcohol, but rather that it can show totally new sides of the characters. Also, it’s good to see the female lead not get instantly drunk. There are very few female leads I’ve seen doing that. And I’d say that this episode was particularly good at fleshing out the cast, on top of telling its story, and I liked the small scene where the female lead still tried to keep up with her friends, and where we revisited one of the culprits of one of the previous episodes.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Robotics;Notes – 06

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

This episode had some interesting developments: it’s turned into a bit of a murder mystery which I really liked. There are so many unanswered questions about this Kou Kimijima, about the things he created and left behind. His story is getting more complex and intertwined with the characters with every episode.

Then there was the end of this episode, that explained why Subaru has been acting strange over the series: his father. I feel that perhaps the creators could have just shown him, looking at the robot and taking Subaru away, rather than throwing that entire over the top tantrum, but perhaps it was the creators’ intention to make him into a psychopath like that.

Apart from that, lots of slice of life and people interacting with each other. Overall, I like these scenes as they show the cast getting to realize their dreams, although I do have to say that Kona is getting more annoying with every episode with her leet-speak.

Also, the supernatural is a bit unfair to the cast in this series. Kaito gets hit, and in return he gets powers that allow him to experience time really slowly, allowing him to be one of the best pilots in the world. Subaru gets powers… to faint. Mizuka… loses the ability to walk. That is some really unfair karma there…
Rating: 5/8 (Great)